Ghost of a chance this story's true?

Updated 2:44 am, Thursday, October 25, 2012

This column originally appeared in the San Antonio Express-News on Oct. 29, 2009.

I believe in ghosts. I don't believe I've ever had any paranormal experiences, but I believe in them.

When I was growing up, my grandmother would regale us with true ghost stories she or family and friends had experienced in Gonzales.

The stories spoiled me so that it's only real-life ghost stories that I enjoy and not made-up ones. (I understand that some believe that "real-life ghost stories" is an oxymoron and that "made-up ghost stories" is redundant. But you believe what you want, and I'll believe what I want.)

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So like any San Antonio teenager, I once visited the famous ghost tracks on the South Side. Legend has it that, sometime in the 1930s or '40s, a school bus filled with children got stuck on the railroad tracks at Villamain and Shane roads and was hit by a train that killed everyone. To this day, if you put your car in neutral 100 feet from what appears to be an uphill grade, the ghost children will push your car across the tracks.

A few years ago, I went back out to the tracks, this time with talcum powder since it's said that you can see the children's handprints on your car.

You question the direction of your life when you're standing in the middle of the street near railroad tracks holding a container of baby powder. I thought about what would happen were something to happen to me right there.

("This just in: Express-News columnist Cary Clack has been found unconscious near some isolated railroad tracks. A container of baby powder was found nearby, and family and friends are declining to comment because they are embarrassed about what he may have been doing.")

There are no newspaper or eyewitness accounts of the train accident at Villamain and Shane because it never happened. There was a train accident that killed 26 children in Salt Lake City in 1938 but not in San Antonio.

When out-of-town news outlets would come to town to do stories on the ghost tracks, they would always seek out Docia Schultz Williams, the First Lady of South Texas Ghost Stories. When she would inform them that there was no date for the alleged accident and that, in fact, it never happened, some would ask her to make up a date. She declined.

It's ironic that in an old and storied city like San Antonio, filled with countless hauntings and tales, the most famous ghost story is the most easily debunked.

No one has chronicled San Antonio's spirits and haunted places better than the 79-year-old Williams, a city guide whose seven books include Spirits of San Antonio and South Texas and When Darkness Falls.

"San Antonio is a hauntingly beautiful city, " she says. "Any large city where people have lived and died, you're going to have some hauntings."

She cites the Menger Hotel as one of her favorite treasure troves of ghostly encounters.

"They are benevolent, happy spirits, " she says. "The only place I felt uncomfortable was Victoria's Black Swan Inn."

The ghost tracks aren't haunted, but there are many other places in this city that are.

"They're spirits of people who have passed on and don't know they're dead, " says Williams of ghosts. "They come back to places they love."

Will she?

"We won't know until I'm gone, " she says with a laugh. "And I'm not eager to pursue that yet."